Solar devices represent an important source of energy that is clean and non-polluting, especially as compared to energy derived from burning fossil fuels. Also, as concern continues to grow over greenhouse gasses and the topic of global warming gets more and more attention in the press and throughout the world, solar energy is a very timely subject.
The trouble with solar energy is efficiency and cost.
Although there has been enormous interest in solar energy, and vast amounts of money have been spent on its research and development, solar energy still does not represent as large a proportion of the world's energy as many would hope for, and continue to hope for.
Accordingly, anything that can increase the efficiency of solar energy, without prohibitively increasing its cost, will be welcome indeed. Thus, there exists a very real and long-felt need for ways to increase the efficiency of solar devices.
Moreover, even if solar devices can work efficiently and in a cost-effective manner, there are many different types of applications in which they might be used, if in fact suitable devices were available. Accordingly, another problem addressed by the present invention is increasing the efficiency of solar devices used in remote locations with relatively modest energy requirements, as well as for extremely low cost applications.